Finland: Suffrage, Nation, and Political Mobilization

Abstract

Sulkunen explores how Finland became the first country in Europe to give women the right to vote and the first in the world to allow women to be elected to the parliament. The chapter focuses on, first, the relationship between nation-building and women’s suffrage and, second, the ‘public-private’ dichotomy connected to gendered citizenship in Finland. She argues that two main approaches emerged to define political citizenship. One was based on the principle of classical liberalism that made wealth, independence, or some other distinction a condition of citizenship. The other approach—which ultimately triumphed—aimed at radical democratic rights, striving include all, irrespective of their class or sex, within the compass of political citizenship.